St. Peter's Basilica
November 27, 2006 at 13:14 You can’t appreciate the grand scale of St. Peter’s until you’re heading up the steps, dwarfed by its gigantic columns and the towering ceilings on the portico. The architecture puts you in your place--your sense of self is diminished by its vastness, your perspective opened. When you step inside St. Peter's, it's easy to briefly lose your bearings in the ambition of Michelangelo’s design and Bernini’s altar.
If the Sistine Chapel seemed spiritually static, St. Peter’s offers a dynamic sense of the sacred. The dome is aligned over the place where Peter was martyred and buried. Former popes rest in the grottoes below. There are chapels and shrines everywhere, and as always, the ceilings draw the eyes and the soul heavenward.
In a chapel on the right is the sculpture I've waited most of my life to see: Michelangelo’s Pieta. I will never forget experiencing it for the first time. Mary’s face is seared in my memory as the face of Grief. Her expression holds all Sorrow, her arms the broken body of her only son. While her right hand supports him, her left hand is held palm up toward heaven in a gesture that conveys both strength and resignation. As promised by the angel in the gospel, her heart has been pierced. You can see it, and you can feel it in your own chest. It's painful to gaze on the Pieta, but impossible to turn away. Its power is palpable, its message eternal and timeless.
I can't believe Michelangelo was only 25 when he sculpted it. The Pieta makes me believe in divine inspiration. How else could he know? How did he channel Grief and give it form and a face? How did he create something so achingly beautiful, so painfully poignant? How did he make the stone speak truth not just to the people of his time but to all people? I wept when I saw it.
The week before we came to Rome, I had a string of e-mails and letters from friends, each detailing a personal crisis, each leaving a trail of sadness. I retreat behind a velvet curtain to a quiet corner of the Basilica set aside for prayer and meditate on all these situations, all these people. Each prayer leads to another, strung together by faith, hope, and love. I can’t seem to stop crying. Finally I quit trying. Why ration my tears for joy or for sorrow? If I can’t open my heart here, where can I open it?
E-Grrrl comes and sits besides me and holds my hand. She whispers, “Daddy says you’re probably thinking of Louise and your parents,” and I am.
This trip is haunted by the past. So many memories intersect in this time, place, and holiday. My Italian grandparents emigrated from a small village 25 miles outside of Rome, and my mind tries to see Italy through their eyes, to understand what they left behind to come to America. Though they’re long dead, I want them to know I’m here, that I know how much courage it took to leave all that was familiar behind and start fresh in a new country.
I’m haunted too by memories of my late sister Louise, who came to Rome when she was 24 and whose steps I’m sure I’m retracing. I wonder what she thought of St. Peter's. I wonder if it made her cry. Finally, I can’t run away from memories of Thanksgiving celebrations from the past and how much I miss my parents and Louise. What I would give to sit around a table with them one more time...
But my sense of loss is offset by a larger sense of my blessings—the opportunity to be here and live in Belgium, the breadth of my circle of friends and family, the miracle of my children, and the steady presence of the man who knows my secret sorrows.
Copyright 2006 Veronica McCabe Deschambault. All rights reserved. www.v-grrrl.com
November 27, 2006
Reader Comments (14)
I know you don't need me to tell me how rich and blessed you are to have such a wonderful family to share it all with. Cheers.
: )
T
I loved this post ...
"Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?"